Stormont talks have paused for the summer, as they were always going to do, freeing both sides to build festive bonfires of blame. Nothing more should be inferred from these revelries than a release of heat and toxins. The DUP’s pyre is by far the most entertaining. Accusing Sinn Féin of seeking “cultural supremacy”, to quote Arlene Foster, is beyond parody in the Twelfth fortnight. Sinn Féin’s towering edifice is more interesting. It is blaming the DUP and the Tories for destroying devolution, meaning it can praise itself for saving devolution in September (for which read Christmas). Notably, Sinn Féin is not calling for another election, as it did back in March when Stormont missed the legal deadline that requires one - a situation we are now in again. Meanwhile, everyone is stuffing an effigy of the secretary the state for failing to extend the legal deadline. But as any new date would have to concede all participants are taking two months off, how much urgency could it maintain?
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With apologies to those affected, the extent to which Northern Ireland can be left on administrative autopilot is remarkable. It had been assumed the secretary of state would have to pass a full budget through Westminster this month, as Stormont has been without one since the end of March and is legally restricted to 95 per cent of last year’s spending if there is no budget by the end of July. Westminster’s final sitting of the year is on July 20. Yet now it seems the secretary of state is only planning to put a few ‘appropriations’ through the Commons - in effect, redistributing £120 million of loose change - while letting the 95 per cent cap come in. Is the government concerned that if Stormont’s entire £10 billion budget went before MPs, they try to lop off a figure on the order of, say, £1 billion?
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Westminster intervention is unlikely to help the schools budget. In April, the secretary of state backed an assessment by Stormont civil servants that education should be cut by 2.5 per cent to help fund a 3 per cent increase for health. Even without that cut, the Department of Education is already under so much pressure it wants to slash the school uniform grant scheme from £4.9 million to £1.9 million. This is an opportunity to address the onerous and dubious uniform policies of certain schools. Departmental guidelines are clear: governors must, as a “high priority”, ensure that all uniform items are available off the peg from a number of retail and online outlets “so that the school uniform does not become a barrier for children from low income families.” How many grammar schools in particular are riding roughshod over this? It should also be noted that the requirement for a uniform has no legislative standing, while primary schools are technically unable to enforce a uniform of any description.
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The Northern Ireland Office has finally abolished secrecy for political donors here, after being bounced into it by a well-timed question from north Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon. However, the secretary of state did not backdate transparency to 2014, as the law allows. Seamus Magee, retired former head of the Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland, responded by tweeting: “Every party in Northern Ireland understood that the publication of political donations over £7,500 was to be retrospective to Jan 2014.” Perhaps they understood it and most even said they supported it but of the main five parties, only Alliance actually asked the secretary of state to implement it. Correspondence shows the other four parties opposed backdating, although that did not stop the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Féin from publicly criticising Brokenshire for not doing so. They could not even be transparent about their attitude to transparency.
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Sinn Féin has been playing silly student politics in Brussels again. When the European Parliament adopted its position on Brexit four months ago, Sinn Féin wasted its time drafting an entirely separate resolution, as if the party’s four MEPs were going to determine the EU’s entire negotiating strategy over Ireland. Now the parliament has overwhelmingly rejected a new resolution to give Northern Ireland special status within the EU, a Sinn Féin policy put forward by the European United Left and Nordic Green Left, of which Sinn Féin is a member. MEPs were not so much against the concept as bemused by the hostile language and procedural irrelevance of the proposal. Sinn Féin then issued a press release saying “this amendment was not put forward by Sinn Féin”, which will hardly have impressed their United Left colleagues either.
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Our Brexit border problem has been put in a continental context by developments in Austria, which has sent troops and armoured vehicles to stop migrants crossing the Brenner Pass from Italy. Brussels and Rome are appalled but the Austrian government - a coalition of left and right – is unabashed at breaching the Schengen agreement. The Brenner Pass bisects the Tyrol region, whose partition and devolution eerily echo our own.
newton@irishnews.com
